1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid consuming apparatus, a method for controlling a liquid consuming apparatus, and the like.
2. Related Art
In an inkjet printer serving as an exemplary liquid consuming apparatus, ink cartridges, which are detachable liquid containers, are installed. Some ink cartridges are provided with an optical path member (prism) for more correctly detecting that the amount of ink in the ink cartridges has fallen below a predetermined amount.
For example, in a known technique described in JP-A-5-332812, an optical path member having a refractive index close to the refractive index of ink is provided in each ink cartridge. If the inside of the optical path member is filled with ink, the light from a light-emitting portion is transmitted through the ink from the optical path member. On the other hand, if the inside of the optical path member is not filled with the ink and is empty, the light from the light-emitting portion is totally reflected at an inner face of the optical path member, and the totally reflected light is detected by a light-receiving portion. The remaining status of the ink can thereby be detected.
JP-A-2013-188879 discloses a technique by which, in an apparatus that determines the remaining status of ink or the like using a photosensor, processing for detecting a failure of the sensor is performed, and different processing for determining the remaining status is performed when a sensor failure is detected and when it is not detected.
When the remaining status of liquid such as ink is determined using light as in JP-A-5-332812 and JP-A-2013-188879, it is conceivable to use a photosensor having a light-emitting portion and a light-receiving portion. At this time, if not only the reflected light from the optical path member in the ink cartridge but also ambient light enter the light-receiving portion of the photosensor, the remaining status of ink is incorrectly determined in some cases. In such cases, the reliability of a result of the determination of the remaining status of liquid will be low.
In contrast, in JP-A-2013-188879, a sensor failure is detected at a position of a failure detection plate, based on the light received by the light-receiving portion while the light-emitting portion is caused to emit light. Specifically, failure determination is realized by simple processing, which is comparison between a signal value in this state and a given reference signal value. It is thereby possible to also detect the case where the photosensor is adversely affected by ambient light. If it is determined that the photosensor is adversely affected by ambient light, the remaining status is not determined based on a detection signal obtained from the photosensor, but is determined based on an estimated remaining amount of the liquid. For this reason, there are cases where, even if the liquid in a liquid container actually is in a remaining state, it is incorrectly determined that the liquid is in a non-remaining state, and an ink cartridge replacement message is displayed. Furthermore, printing is stopped at this time even in the middle of the printing, and accordingly the time taken to finish the printing will be longer.